DT Racer

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The DT stands for Don't Touch.

By Chris Roper

DT Racer is a budget racing title priced at the lower than low price of $14.99. While its low target price obviously meant that its production would be quite limited with regards to its budget, it aimed to give gamers with little cash a fun racing experience.

Here's the problem: It's not fun. It's not even remotely fun. And its $14.99 price tag? Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec has been a Greatest Hits title for years now, selling for $19.99 and offering an infinitely more enjoyable racing experience. And by infinitely, I'm not exaggerating. GT3 is near-racing perfection, with just about the only thing missing is vehicle damage. DT Racer has vehicle damage, but nothing else that even comes close to anything in GT3.

For starters, the controls needed a whole lot more tuning. If you turn off the three driving assists, then pressing the left analog stick even slightly in any direction will cause your car to start squirrelling around the track. The cars aren't uncontrollable by any means, but since you lose traction you lose speed, meaning that it's quite difficult to keep your speed up even in the slowest of turns (by slow I mean nearly straight).

The AI has major issues as well. It doesn't really know how to race a reasonable line, other than the preplanned line, so if two cars are vying for position next to each other, they'll wildly try and shift lanes, not smoothly like any reasonable driver would. It also does very little, if anything at all, to try and avoid objects, or even other cars, in the middle of the road. If you stop in their line, they'll just run straight into you. If one of the AI drivers crashes out and happens to land upside down in the middle of said line, it only needs to wait until another car comes because it will surely crash into it.

I've even seen an AI racer drive straight into a solid wall at full speed, one that was coming from miles away. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for this to have happened.

Even when you're not on the track, there are numerous other problems. For one, fuel plays a part in the game, and you need to manually refuel your car after every race by sliding a meter from whatever percent full your tank currently reads up to 100%. There is absolutely no reason for not pushing the fuel to 100%, so for this not to be taken care of automatically or with the push of a single button is ridiculous.

It's also absolutely mandatory that you fill your car to 100% because the thing burn through more fuel than an F15. For example, one of the first tracks in the game is a very basic, semi-oval speed course, much like one of the early tracks in any of the Gran Turismo games. It is approximately 1.3 miles in length. After a five-lap race, I was down to 28% of my fuel left.

Let me put it another way: I raced 6.5 miles and burned through 72% of my gas tank.

Ending on a positive note, the game has a decent graphics engine behind it. It features progressive scan and 16:9 support, as well as multiple levels of anti-aliasing, which I can't recall another PlayStation 2 game offering. The vehicles and tracks aren't the most detailed things ever, but they look pretty decent, and there's actual grass being rendered instead of a flat texture. A few problems mar its visuals though, like the fact that the motion blur that appears on the sides of the screen when you're flying (think Burnout) applies to everything on the sides of the screen, including cars that are traveling exactly the same speed as you are. The game generally runs well, but on occasion it can take major hits in its framerate.

DT Racer

Race to the finish line while causing as many opponents to crash as possible in DT RACER, a demolition racing game where damage affects a car's acceleration and handling.

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The Verdict

This game is pure crap, plain and simple. Not is it only a bad racing game, its budget price is only $5 less than Gran Turismo 3. There are a million better racing titles out there, cheap or not, than DT Racer, so leave this one stuck in pit row.

5Lasting AppealThe main singleplayer mode isn't all that deep, but there are a fair amount of races. Decent length for a $15 title, though it'll be very, very hard to find any reason to continue to play.